The Leader Column

Authoritative, independent and hard hitting, the weekly column on the business of football tackles some of the biggest issues of the week. Click here to sign up for your weekly fix from the Leaders in Football.

GERRY COX: FAIR PLAY - FAIR CHANCE

5:30pm Thursday, 4th March 2010

I was in Manchester this week as the European Clubs Association met and announced the result of their negotiations with UEFA over a raft of proposals aimed at introducing some overdue financial stability to European football. It was Michel Platini...

DR ROGAN TAYLOR: IT'S THE RIGHT TIME WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT

5:00pm Thursday, 4th March 2010

This week the stories came in fast flurries, like snowfall in the Scottish Highlands. There was talk of the Premier League overseas media rights for 2010-2013 topping the billion pound mark, but suggestions that the PL may not wish to publish the tr...

KEIR RADNEDGE: AGENTS CREATING A STIR IN FOOTBALL'S ALPHABET SOUP

4:54pm Thursday, 4th March 2010

Agents are an issue. David Gill said so this week and he should know, as chief executive of Manchester United. FIFA also says so. This is why it is rolling out its web-based Transfer Matching System which will render the discredited licensing syste...

GERRY COX: THE BIDDING WAR INTENSIFIES

5:00pm Thursday, 25th February 2010

There are nine months to go until FIFA decide who will host the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals, and as in any gestation period, things are developing rapidly. England's bid to host 2018 appears to be progressing smoothly, having got off to a controv...

KEIR RADNEDGE: FIFA STEPS UP AS VIRTUAL AGENT OF CHANGE

4:45pm Thursday, 25th February 2010

Internet technology is coming to football's rescue in the never-ending duel of wits between associations and agents. At one stage FIFA thought it had come up with the answer by introducing a licensing system. But most agents could not be bothered to...

ROGAN TAYLOR: DOING A 'GEOFFREY'

4:30pm Thursday, 25th February 2010

This week we were regaled by a chap calling for a 'boycott' of Man Utd by its growingly troubled fans. It wasn't some firebrand on a soap-box haranguing the Old Trafford faithful either; it emanated from somewhere higher up the feeding chain. No les...

ROGAN TAYLOR: IT'S ALL ABOUT WHO YOU HATE

4:30pm Thursday, 18th February 2010

It's probably an aspect of the football business that most operators inside it would like to ignore. But it's a fact. Much of the passionate frenzy and loyalty that fans show for their clubs (and countries) is rooted in intense rivalries...

KEIR RADNEDGE: WHOSE GAME IS IT?

4:15pm Thursday, 18th February 2010

Football club directors everywhere face the same challenge: how to fit a quart into a pint pot. That may be representing the issue in an old-fashioned imperial way but it's the same, for example, on both sides of the English Channel (or, if you pre...

GERRY COX: ALL IN A GOOD CAUSE

4:00pm Thursday, 18th February 2010

The World Cup finals will ensure that all eyes are on South Africa this summer, and that should be very good news for the country's - and indeed the continent of Africa's - underprivileged and poor. The official charitable campaign for the tourname...

THE LEADER: HOW DID IT COME TO THIS?

4:00pm Thursday, 11th February 2010

DR ROGAN TAYLOR: THE MADNESS IN THE ASYLUM The BBC Radio 5 interview with West Ham's new co-owner, David Gold, this week was little short of revelatory. It was like peering through the opening of a creaking door into an old madhouse...

KEIR RADNEDGE: WORLD CUP IS JUST THE TICKET FOR FANS AND CRITICS

5:30pm Thursday, 4th February 2010

Depends who you talk to... as to whether World Cup ticket sales are swinging along happily or lagging behind expectations. One fact is sure: the matches will be official sell-outs and scalpers/touts - despite all the promises of draconian action - ...

GERRY COX: PLAYER CAP THYSELF

5:15pm Thursday, 4th February 2010

I have spent a lot of time with footballers over the past 20 years or so, but I also live in the real world, so don't expect me to make a case for players as wonderful humanitarians. But it is refreshing to hear that one or two players are starting...

DR ROGAN TAYLOR: BROKEN CHINA

5:00pm Thursday, 4th February 2010

It isn't every day that you wake up to hear that someone you know may be facing the death penalty, and a few others you've met are already banged up in jail. But when I heard the news this week that Nan Yong - the top man at the Chinese FA - had be...

GERRY COX: MONEY, MONEY, MONEY - IT'S A RICH MAN'S WORLD

5:00pm Thursday, 28th January 2010

I seem to have spent more time recently talking to people in football about financial matters rather than the game itself, and that is a worrying trend. In the past week or so, I have interviewed Gianfranco Zola (manager of club in trouble) Peter S...

KEIR RADNEDGE: AUSSIE STRATEGY POINTS A WINNING FINGER IN LONDON'S DIRECTION

4:35pm Thursday, 28th January 2010

The latest personnel changes among the Australian World Cup bid team prompt the mischievous thought that perhaps Frank Lowy has missed one last trick: maybe he should propose staging the Opening Match and the Final at Wembley. This is, after al...

ROGAN TAYLOR: A FOOTBALL CLUB ISN'T SUPPOSED TO MAKE A PROFIT... OR A LOSS

4:30pm Thursday, 28th January 2010

When the Man Utd fans objected so vigorously to the removal of the words 'football club' from their logo, some might have thought it smacked of a typically conservative reaction from supporters who didn't live in the real world. But those fans were...

GERRY COX: GOING FOR A BURTON? WILL ST GEORGE'S PARK BE A WHITE ELEPHANT FOR THE FA OR THE SAVIOUR OF ENGLISH FOOTBALL?

5:15pm Thursday, 21st January 2010

I have seen the future of English football - and I hope it works. On Tuesday, I was invited by the Football Association to visit a beautiful area of countryside, over 300 acres of woodland in East Staffordshire. Known as Burton or the National ...

DR ROGAN TAYLOR: WILL ANYONE EVER JOIN THE 'FAMOUS FIVE'

5:10pm Thursday, 21st January 2010

They say eight out of every ten dollars in the football business is made in Europe and most of that is in just the five top divisions in England, Germany, Italy, Spain and France. Most of the world's best players also play there. In South Africa ne...

KEIR RADNEDGE: FOOTBALL'S LAND OF MILK AND HONEY

5:00pm Thursday, 21st January 2010

The sights and sounds generated by the vast amount of cash sloshing around the Champions League, plus the development hand-outs passed on by UEFA down through the system, suggest that Europe - never mind the global recession - remains football's la...

GERRY COX: BROKEN WINDOW - SHOULD THE JANUARY TRANSFER WINDOW BE SCRAPPED?

3:15pm Thursday, 14th January 2010

The stats speak for themselves - transfer activity so far this January is well down on previous years. Barely 7m has been spent in the top three divisions in England, and every agent and manager you speak to tells you the same story - do not expec...

KEIR RADNEDGE: LEGACY FACTOR NOT ALWAYS WHAT IT SEEMS

3:05pm Thursday, 14th January 2010

Naturally, the focus of concern at the African Nations Cup was the terror attack on the Togo team bus. The aftermath was predictably confused: Would the players stay or go? Did this say anything or nothing about the World Cup? Has the unofficial mo...

DR ROGAN TAYLOR: MAYBE FOOTBALL'S NOT 'BARLEY' ANYMORE

3:00pm Thursday, 14th January 2010

The attack on the bus carrying the Togo team to the Cup of Nations in Angola has sent shivers down the spine of the football world. We may be getting used to all kinds of horrors these days but most of us sub-consciously thought that football was '...

Dr Rogan Taylor: THE REAL SUGAR DADDIES

5:00pm Thursday, 7th January 2010

Last year was a tough one for many football clubs. Financial stability has been hard to find for numerous companies across the world, amidst frightening levels of debt and shrinking consumer demand, and football has had its casualties. Portsmouth a...

Keir Radnedge: Bayern and the Global Recession

4:30pm Thursday, 7th January 2010

As a player Christian Nerlinger was good but not great. He worked hard and consistently for Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, Rangers and Kaiserslautern, which was enough to earn six appearances in the German national team. He was always a suppor...

Gerry Cox: Why aren't we up for the Cup?

4:25pm Thursday, 7th January 2010

The FA Cup has lost its sheen, we are told by the pessimists, and the wide open spaces in the stands at Wigan, Bolton and Middlesbrough do not offer much evidence to the contrary. Have we simply fallen out of love with the oldest and most romantic ...

Christmas Cheers

5:00pm Thursday, 17th December 2009

Association Football was born in a Christian country. The posh, ex-public schoolboys who met in a pub in London in 1863, and wrote the Rules of the game, may not have been especially 'religious' - but they had been born and raised amongst Sunday hy...

PITY THE POOR MILLIONAIRES

4:00pm Thursday, 10th December 2009

There's an old saying in football circles that goes something like this: 'How can you make a small fortune owning a football club?' The answer is invariably along the lines of, 'Start with a large one.' Few can doubt it. News this week that the o...

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

4:00pm Thursday, 3rd December 2009

With the release this week of Bayern Munich's accounts for 2008-9, we catch a glimpse of another world, far away from the turmoil of parts of the Premier League and the struggling giants of Serie A. It's a world where ownership is secure and certai...

THE ELEPHANT IN THE DRESSING ROOM

3:00pm Thursday, 26th November 2009

Lots of people make good money out of football. BSkyB have grown rich on their subscription based business broadcasting live Premier League games. Stadium designers - and builders - have had a very productive couple of decades; major sponsors, from...

SIZE REALLY DOES COUNT

4:35pm Thursday, 19th November 2009

It's difficult not to have some sympathy for Rangers and Celtic. They are like big fish swimming in a pond full of tiddlers, with an eternally limited food supply. The problem is if they leave the pond, most of the tiddlers will probably die. And w...

He Shoots, He Tweets!

8:00am Friday, 13th November 2009

Social networking sites have forever changed the landscapes in which individuals may interact with each other. In everyday life, people are now able to reach an ever wider group of individuals anywhere in the world without actually ever having a v...

Where are the Ethnic Leaders in Football?

8:18am Friday, 6th November 2009

It is often pointed out how few black managers there are within the top tiers of English football, as well as Europe for that matter. In comparison to the number of black players currently plying their trade in the Europe's top leagues, there does...

A BIT OF BETTER BANTER

3:08pm Thursday, 29th October 2009

It's rare to hear footballers speak plainly and honestly about their lives as players whilst they are still playing. Once retired of course, some will tell it like it was with directness and gusto (and possibly some embellishment) at after dinner s...

START WITH A BANG

3:59pm Thursday, 15th October 2009

When you attend football conferences across the globe, after a brief opening speech of welcome, the first speaker and topic is usually interesting - even challenging - but rarely explosive. Not so at the Leaders in Football gathering at Stamford Br...

THERE'S RICH.....AND THEN THERE'S RICH

5:00pm Thursday, 1st October 2009

Rich lists can be a bit confusing sometimes, and there's plenty of them about these days. In football, you get lists of the richest clubs - and lists of the richest owners - and of course the two don't necessarily tally. Anyway, what makes a footbal...

DOING THEIR BIDDING

5:00pm Thursday, 24th September 2009

Hosting a World Cup used to be a fairly straightforward business. Only football people really cared where it would be staged - the players, so they could prepare for the local conditions, and the travelling fans (back in the day, few in number), so...

BUDDY, YOU'RE SPENDING TOO MANY DIMES

4:00pm Thursday, 17th September 2009

As Europe makes its way through the worst economic recession since the 1930s, a new wind is blowing around the financial governance of football clubs. This week was marked by regulatory announcements from two of the most powerful and influential gov...

Polishing diamonds or capturing slaves?

4:30pm Thursday, 10th September 2009

Following the transfer ban handed down by Fifa on Chelsea last week, there has been voluminous discussion in the media (and no doubt down the pub) about young 'foreign' players entering the English game. The Fifa ban regarding the Gael Kakuta move ...

PUT IT ON YOUR SHIRT AND PUT YOUR SHIRT ON IT

4:00pm Thursday, 3rd September 2009

It was thirty years ago today (well almost) that a Liverpool group began to play a new commercial game. They kicked off a trend which became (well almost) as big as the Beatles. The 'group' was Liverpool FC and the new game was shirt sponsorship wh...

IT'S DEJA-VU ALL OVER AGAIN

4:00pm Thursday, 27th August 2009

For those over the age of forty who watched the Ten O'Clock News on Tuesday evening, it must have felt like they'd slipped into a time warp. The footage of West Ham and Millwall fans charging onto the pitch - while the game was still playing - and ...

IS THE TECHIE'S DREAM FOOTBALL'S NIGHTMARE?

5:00pm Thursday, 20th August 2009

We can all reel them off: those 'goals which were never given'. Roy Carroll scrambling the ball back from at least a foot behind the goal-line, after Pedro Mendes' long punt from the halfway line should have given Spurs the winner at Old Trafford b...

INTERNET PIRATES SHIVER FOOTBALL'S TIMBERS

3:00pm Thursday, 13th August 2009

What's the ultimate test of the market value for anything? 'How much someone will pay you for it', is the usual answer. But what if people find they can get it for free, regardless of who you sell it to? What's it worth then? As technology advances...

IS THE DREAM OVER?

3:00pm Thursday, 6th August 2009

As the Football League kicks off this weekend, followed a week later by the Premier League, what do fans in England dream of these days in terms of success for their clubs? It's a pertinent question right now, as the gaps between individual clubs an...

If the cap fits......

3:05pm Thursday, 30th July 2009

It can sometimes be difficult to stifle a sigh of resignation whenever the topic of 'salary caps' returns to the news. It seems like the idea has been in constant discussion for the last fifty years - at least, in the UK, ever since the 'maximum wag...

THE GRAND TOUR

4:00pm Thursday, 23rd July 2009

This is the peak time in those 'gap years' - when there is no World Cup or European Championships - for many of the bigger clubs from western Europe to 'tour the world'. During the summer of those years which end in odd numbers, we've grown used to ...

How deep are your pockets? How high is the SKY?

3:00pm Thursday, 16th July 2009

The news that ESPN has done a deal with SKY to broadcast those Premier League TV rights washed up on the shores of Setanta's shipwreck will raise few eyebrows amongst media folk. ESPN snapped up the flotsam: 46 live games next season and 23 games f...

Ron Gone

3:00pm Thursday, 9th July 2009

With a gigantic splash, and an 80 million bait on the hook, this week Real Madrid beached their fish and displayed their prize at the Bernabeu. Around 80,000 madridistas turned out to welcome Ronaldo; the most expensive football player on earth. ...

The Confounding Confederations Cup

6:00pm Thursday, 2nd July 2009

It's a strange creature, the Fifa Confederations Cup. Born in Saudi Arabia in the early 1990s, it started life as an opportunity for King Fahd to see his national team play against some of the 'continental champions' who would accept an invitation....

What's Winning the Champions' League Really Worth?

4:30pm Thursday, 25th June 2009

At a time when a plethora of statistics is emerging about the TV audience size and the economic impact of victory in the Champions' League, it's worth pondering on what we can learn. If someone had asked you whether the TV audience for the 2008, Man...

The media is the paymaster these days

8:00am Friday, 19th June 2009

For the past decade or so, there was a general rule you could apply to the income of Premier League clubs: there were three overall streams, usually about equal in weight; commercial (inc. sponsorship); matchday, and media. Only Manchester United, w...

Deja View All Over Again?

4:30pm Thursday, 11th June 2009

The news this week that, by the time you read this, Setanta may well be in administration came as no surprise to many within the industry. Like so many businesses of all kinds recently, the model included extensive borrowing to acquire right at a ti...

SEXY FOOTBALL?

4:00pm Thursday, 4th June 2009

It is often claimed, both by fans and players, that scoring in a football game can be, well, to put no finer point on it, better than 'scoring' in bed. The physical release involved for those who play and those who watch them play - and the sense of...

THE GOLDEN AGES

4:30pm Thursday, 28th May 2009

Any outsider to football might imagine that two great clubs like Man United and Barca would have met a number of times in European Finals but in fact, prior to this week, they had met only once. That occasion - when United beat Barca 2 - 1 in the Ue...

Football's NOT 'coming home'.....at last

3:00pm Thursday, 21st May 2009

The launch this week of England's bid to stage the World Cup in 2018 (or possibly 2022) struck an appropriate note. The 'football's coming home' theme which was attached to previous bids has been thoroughly rejected in recognition of the evidence th...

PL Marriage or Legia Calcio divorce. What's best for everyone?

5:00pm Thursday, 14th May 2009

The Premier League had been a commercial success long before it became the powerhouse league in Europe. This year again, the four semi-finalists for the Champions League contained only one team not from the P L (and Chelsea will long insist that it ...

Liverpool FC 20, Manchester United 10

4:45pm Thursday, 7th May 2009

Football is a very difficult thing to define. And it looks as though it should be easy. It's a game isn't it? Played, at the top of the pyramid, by professionals in clubs; paid for by those who love it (the fans); and run as a business with investor...

Spare tickets, anybody?

5:42pm Thursday, 30th April 2009

There's a famous story about the FA Cup Final that's been told year after year for over a century. It's called, 'Where have all the tickets gone?' It resurfaced again this week with some serious belly-aching in public by leading figures from both fi...

When the past met the future

6:33pm Thursday, 23rd April 2009

There can't be too many people involved with football anywhere in the world who haven't spent at least a few minutes thinking about the Hillsborough disaster this last week. The 20th anniversary of that dreadful day, 15th April, 1989, provided a sig...